Justin Elliott – Julian Assange and the sex crime Trojan horse

Swedish prosecutors today ramped up their pursuit of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by authorizing Interpol to issue a so-called Red Notice, which asks foreign governments to arrest and extradite Assange to Sweden.

The prosecutors say he is wanted for questioning about accusations of sex crimes made against him by two women; he has not been charged with a crime. But the real peril here for Assange — whose whereabouts are unknown — is that if he ends up in the hands of Swedish authorities, the chances that he will be extradited to the United States rise significantly.

(Journalist Mark Leon Goldberg has a good explanation of what a Red Notice actually is. Assange is not on a “most wanted” list, as some headlines have put it.)

The WikiLeaks disclosure has revealed not only numerous government secrets, but also the driving mentality of major factions in our political and media class. Simply put, there are few countries in the world with citizenries and especially media outlets more devoted to serving, protecting and venerating government authorities than the U.S. Indeed, I don’t quite recall any entity producing as much bipartisan contempt across the American political spectrum as WikiLeaks has: as usual, for authoritarian minds, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon.